Mystery TSA Plates

I took Phone Screen and Car Key for this experiment. These are the photos I took on day 1, day 3, and day 7. I wanted to get an amazing result, but the phone screen and car key have a similar result. However, they get a different type of colony on day 7.

Day 1 of Experiment:

On the first day, I took my cell phone and car key for the experiment. On different two plates, I divided into two section. I swapped my phone screen and swapped it on the first section. Also did the same thing with my car key. After that, one of the plates was incubated at 24°C which is room temperature, and the other plate was incubated at 37 °C.

Figure 1: TSA Plates on Day 1 (37°C & 24°C)

Day 3 of Experiment:

On day 3, I was able to see three colonies on the car key plate which was incubated at 37 °C. You can see the photo below (left plate). There was nothing happened on the plate at room temperature. The size of the colonies was tiny.

Figure 2: TSA Plates on Day 3 (37°C & 24°C)

Day 7 of Experiment:

On day 7, I could see the colonies on both of the plates. There were two big colonies on the car key plate at 37°C. It seems like the colonies from day 3 grow up. Also, there were two small colonies on the other plates. They look pretty similar, but there was a light pink color of the colony on the car key plate at 37°C.

Figure 3: TSA plates on Day 7 (37°C & 24°C)

I took one of the colonies from each plate and zoomed in with my microscope. The size of the colonies on the plate at 37 °C was bigger, but when I see them with a microscope, they look just the same. Also, the light color of the colony from car key at 37 °C looked similar as the other colonies.

Figure 4: Phone Screen & Car Key at 37 °C on day 7

Figure 5: Phone Screen & Car Key at Room Temperature on day 7

Overall Observation/Conclusion:

The colonies on day 7 looked alike, and the result from car key and phone screen was pretty similar. However, the size and the speed of growing was a bit different at a different temperature. The colony grew up faster at the higher temperature. Also, the size of the colony at 37 °C was bigger than the one in the room temperature. The looking of each colony was pretty similar, but there was one different color of the colony on car key plate at 37 °C. This experiment was interesting to observe. Furthermore, I would get more amazing results if I took different type of samples.